My Computer is Slow

One of the most common complaints I hear from people is that their computer is slow. The "get up and go" has got up and went!

A slow computer can be caused by many factors. Some easy to fix, some not so easy. Let's take a look at some regular maintenance steps that you should be doing periodically to keep your computer in shape.

Is your Mac running slow?

When someone tells me that their computer is slow, one of the first things I do is clear out all of the temporary internet files and cookies. If left unchecked, this collection of unnecessary files can take up gigabytes of space on your hard drive.

The next thing I would do is run Ccleaner. Ccleaner is a freeware application that does a more thorough job of cleaning out your hard drive.

Next, I would run another freeware program called Free Internet Eraser. Free Internet Eraser does a nice job of clearing temporary internet files, especially from Internet Explorer.

Next, I would run another freeware program called MalwareBytes to scan your computer for viruses, worms, and malware.

Now, once you have your hard drive nice and clean, it would be a good idea to "defrag" the hard drive. During normal use, your computer is opening and closing files, swapping files from the pagefile area into your RAM memory and back again. All of this activity creates file fragments all over your hard drive. This can potentially slow down your computer because your hard drive has to locate these fragmented files when you want to use them. It has to collect all of the pieces of the file and put them together to create a complete file. Now all of this happens in milliseconds, which is barely perceptible to humans, but if your drive is heavily fragmented, you can begin to notice more of a delay as time passes. Then, before you know it, your computer is slow.

The Windows Disk Defragmenter can sort your hard drive files so that they are contiguous (side by side in one place), and thus easier to find and load into memory.

Another important feature of the Disk Defragmenter is that it can show you how much free space there is on your hard drive. Your hard drive needs free space (about 300-500MB) for sorting and swapping files. If your hard drive does not have enough free space, then this could be the reason why your computer is slow. Click the link to learn more about how to use Disk Defragmenter.

If you find out from using the Disk Defragmenter that your hard drive is nearly full (you'll need at least 15% of free space for Disk Defragmenter to run), then you will need to begin removing programs from your computer by using the "Add or Remove Programs" utility. Over time, you probably have loaded many programs on your computer, and some of these programs you may no longer need or want. By removing them you will free up valuable hard drive space. Click the link to learn more about how to use Add or Remove Programs.

Once you have completed the cleaning and defragging of your hard drive, you should see a noticeable increase in response time and speed on your computer.

If you do not see any improvement, and your computer is still slow, then your problem is not related to disk space and fragmentation. It may be that your hard drive has some bad clusters. A cluster is the smallest amount of disk space that can be allocated to hold a file. A bad cluster can be software related, which can be fixed by formatting the drive, or can be hardware related, where there is actual physical damage to the drive disk.

CHECK DISK

CheckDisk (Chkdsk.exe) is a Windows utility that checks your hard drive for bad clusters. It will also try to repair any problems that it finds. In order to use Chkdsk, make sure you are logged on as an administrator or a member of the Administrators group on your PC. Most home PC users are automatically considered Administrators when they start using their PC. Click the link to view a tutorial on how to run the Check Disk Utility.

If your hard drive passes Check Disk with flying colors, then maybe a memory issue is the reason that your computer is slow.

MEMORY HOGS

If after doing all of the above suggestions, you still feel that your computer is slow, you may have a "Memory Hog". What I mean by that is, you have an application running that is using most or all of your memory resources. Memory hogs can bring your system to a virtual standstill.

Some of the most notorious memory hogs are unfortunately, anti-virus applications, since they are constantly scanning files for potential malware. Encryption software, which "scrambles" your data so that unauthorized persons cannot view it, is another potential memory hog. The best way for you to check for a potential memory hog is by using the Task Manager utility. Click the link to view a tutorial on how to use Task Manager.

Task Manager may indeed find an application that is hogging your memory. If that is the case, you will need to decide if the application is something that you need to use. If it is, then you would want to consider installing additional RAM memory. Or, if your PC has a few years on it, it may be time for an upgrade.

My Computer is Slow

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